Hey all, (warning, long story alert)
Me again. I asked the other half a while back if she wanted to sign up and do a write up for you, she didn't think that wise as she doesn't currently do the work on the car though has been trying to take in as much as she can.
Back innnnn March I think, whilst I was still toying with the idea of going to see the Datto I now have. The other half was pining over minis. Something she's done for a while after reading over my extensive Mini Mag collection from the early to mid 2000's. She'd clocked the 4 that live near us, knows who owns them all, points out if anything has changed about them, even plucked up the courage to speak to one of the owners once about their car. I, having been in a family that has had a few minis through our hands. Often told her of the problems with them and that a clean (enough) one, which she would need to get, would be out of her budget based on her ability to work on the car and my inability to currently weld or afford to pay someone to do it (because I was planning on buying the datto).
We were walking back from town on an unusually warm winters day to see one of our close neighbors who'd usually have an ice cream transit parked in front of their garage had moved it aside and there was a dark blue 90's mini just popping out of the garage, we've lived in our house 2 years and never seen it before. From then on I kind of dismissed the idea of her getting a mini as they were just too common around our parts, in reality that's not a bad thing when it comes to advice and parts availability etc too but you get the idea, they're great cars no doubt.
She still searched and searched though to no avail, essentially she wanted a 90's sportpack, the commonest of minis that not only wasn't rusty but also had a clean engine bay and a non-chav interior, not an easy feat for the price she was looking to pay. One which may just need time rather than buckets of money spending to clean it up. I was washing up and she came in to tell me how her searches hadn't brought anything up again.
After I'd finished washing up I did that thing you do when you go on ebay (dangerous) typed in "classic car" and amended the budget to what she could afford max, sat on the sofa and had a browse for myself.
Lots of nice cars in my opinion popped up, though now I bet you think you know what happened, yeah you're right. I spotted a car I liked, a celica supra, I was browsing through and wanted to see if the seller had spares, that's when I saw it, in that sellers other items. Within budget and not far away. I went to the kitchen and showed her the phone and commented "it's sort of like a mini, and there can't be many left" having never seen one in person.
We messaged the seller and went off on a day trip to see the car disguised as a trip to Bath. The disguised bit I'll get to shortly.
The day was a bit cold, rainy and blustery but we enjoyed it, we went to view the car early then went into town, browsing the sights of Bath whilst contemplating where IF she bought it, it would live as we didn't and don't have space at our house thanks to all my bits and bobs.
This is where scale of our dilemma grew, we knew what her mum was like and that there would be implications if we told her right away rather than after the fact it was too late to change our minds, what was right about the car and what wasn't. Whilst we could have the car in our garden, we didn't feel right by the car to leave it outside in the elements. We do have another garage for our house though it's currently rented out and can't just kick them out of it, eventually after forgetting about Bath and getting lunch we went back to see the car again, Chloe had made up her mind by this point, she was going to get it regardless. I have no idea if that was a good idea or not yet as it led to quite the family feud over the weeks to follow.
Essentially the reason we disguised the trip was because Chloe's mother is an "old cars aren't safe" type, she likes the idea of them but nothing else, odd as she goes to classic car shows with her other half every now and then, I guess just to humor him. She's fine with me owning an old car and motorbikes but her own daughter?! HECK NO, bare in mind, Chloe had been out for trips in my cars loads of times.
We endured some pretty lengthy lectures over dinner and on the phone or whenever she came round bringing them both to tears at many stages and inviting her to leave our house on occasion.
This was all before the car was even in our full possession, on the day of purchase we agreed with the seller to deliver the car a couple of weeks later as we'd have had time to prepare for its arrival. Arrival day came, we took the car in and it was in the garden, where we did't want it to be. Were we going to ask her mum to use her garage? No way.
We bought a car cover and there it sat for a bit till the weather got better.
One day we decided the weather was good enough to take the car out for a spin, it was supposed to just be a trip to the local petrol station and back. We warmed the car up, it ran fine and headed on our way.
Got to the petrol station, put a tenner in, started on our way back and then it started coughing, this came to a loss of power unless you were on full throttle. This then went to would only run with choke. We stopped as soon as we could to take a look.
Nothing obvious straight away. turned it on but it felt like it had 5bhp from then on. A decision had to be made here. Drive to her mum's house, which was equidistant from our house and use the breakdown as a "we might need to use your garage" or go home and continue to store the car outside, Chloe can be quite sneaky. We drove to her mum's house.
Since the car's been in her garage I think shes come round to the fact that we're keeping it, after seeing it in person she could see it's not as bad as she might have thought, though the breakdown didn't exactly fill her with hope and doesn't change the safety aspect.
<<STORY OVER - BACK TO THE CAR>>
It should be a 1200 single carb 4 speed but has had a triumph acclaim (honda anyway) 1335 twin carb engine with the 5 speed. Has a spotless black vinyl interior and is REALLY lovely. I am VERY jealous of Chloe even though I have a 280z.
Keen eyes will notice some similarities between that car and our own...
So it's now orange with a black stripe. Overall the paint job is definitely not concourse. It's reasonably thin in places, mostly flat and there are runs. We don't care as there just isn't any rust really and there are no oil leaks, the engine bay is generally tidy for a car of this age. We have the clocks from the acclaim that the engine came from proving age and also received the 1200 single carb engine for free as a spare should the need arise.
I don't have pictures of the engine bay on me but I do have some somewhere at home.
I decided a while back to start to hunt down what the problem was and if we could get parts to fix it.
Essentially I believe the problem to be lack of fuel flow rather than bad fuel.
I checked all the standard settings for the carbs and whilst doing so noticed a few bits of rubber that weren't to my liking.
Fuel hoses and such were past needing to be replaced.
We got silicone hose in black to replace all the vacuum lines, I joined some acclaim pages and spoke to them about parts for the carbs, many suggesting Goldwing gl1100 carb parts were similar, I bit the bullet, bought some and yup, spot on, after digging deep through the carbs, I found one of the filters above the float needle and passage way was completely clogged with detritus, I cleared this out and hopefully was the issue.
That leads us to this week, I left the measuring and purchasing of O-rings to Chloe, she got some from amazon, though when they arrived they were pretty bad quality and probably not at all fuel safe and were nowhere near the described sizes, lesson learnt for her I think.
I searched and found this site : simplybearings.co.uk/shop/Seals-Nitrile-Rubber/c19_5574/index.html?gclid=Cj0KCQjw-o_bBRCOARIsAM5NbIMFVBN9R1LiO-SoNviB3SMyugEnn-wJlYyRzoBW0rTM9zXyuVLNHmkaAmFTEALw_wcB
Searched for what we needed and they arrived this week.
That clears up all the remaining seals we need to change to get the car back on the road. I've got some more pictures somewhere of the cleaning of the carbs but not on this computer. so I'll stick them up when I can, I'll be heading to see the car tomorrow all being well to get them back on and balanced etc.
Me again. I asked the other half a while back if she wanted to sign up and do a write up for you, she didn't think that wise as she doesn't currently do the work on the car though has been trying to take in as much as she can.
Back innnnn March I think, whilst I was still toying with the idea of going to see the Datto I now have. The other half was pining over minis. Something she's done for a while after reading over my extensive Mini Mag collection from the early to mid 2000's. She'd clocked the 4 that live near us, knows who owns them all, points out if anything has changed about them, even plucked up the courage to speak to one of the owners once about their car. I, having been in a family that has had a few minis through our hands. Often told her of the problems with them and that a clean (enough) one, which she would need to get, would be out of her budget based on her ability to work on the car and my inability to currently weld or afford to pay someone to do it (because I was planning on buying the datto).
We were walking back from town on an unusually warm winters day to see one of our close neighbors who'd usually have an ice cream transit parked in front of their garage had moved it aside and there was a dark blue 90's mini just popping out of the garage, we've lived in our house 2 years and never seen it before. From then on I kind of dismissed the idea of her getting a mini as they were just too common around our parts, in reality that's not a bad thing when it comes to advice and parts availability etc too but you get the idea, they're great cars no doubt.
She still searched and searched though to no avail, essentially she wanted a 90's sportpack, the commonest of minis that not only wasn't rusty but also had a clean engine bay and a non-chav interior, not an easy feat for the price she was looking to pay. One which may just need time rather than buckets of money spending to clean it up. I was washing up and she came in to tell me how her searches hadn't brought anything up again.
After I'd finished washing up I did that thing you do when you go on ebay (dangerous) typed in "classic car" and amended the budget to what she could afford max, sat on the sofa and had a browse for myself.
Lots of nice cars in my opinion popped up, though now I bet you think you know what happened, yeah you're right. I spotted a car I liked, a celica supra, I was browsing through and wanted to see if the seller had spares, that's when I saw it, in that sellers other items. Within budget and not far away. I went to the kitchen and showed her the phone and commented "it's sort of like a mini, and there can't be many left" having never seen one in person.
We messaged the seller and went off on a day trip to see the car disguised as a trip to Bath. The disguised bit I'll get to shortly.
The day was a bit cold, rainy and blustery but we enjoyed it, we went to view the car early then went into town, browsing the sights of Bath whilst contemplating where IF she bought it, it would live as we didn't and don't have space at our house thanks to all my bits and bobs.
This is where scale of our dilemma grew, we knew what her mum was like and that there would be implications if we told her right away rather than after the fact it was too late to change our minds, what was right about the car and what wasn't. Whilst we could have the car in our garden, we didn't feel right by the car to leave it outside in the elements. We do have another garage for our house though it's currently rented out and can't just kick them out of it, eventually after forgetting about Bath and getting lunch we went back to see the car again, Chloe had made up her mind by this point, she was going to get it regardless. I have no idea if that was a good idea or not yet as it led to quite the family feud over the weeks to follow.
Essentially the reason we disguised the trip was because Chloe's mother is an "old cars aren't safe" type, she likes the idea of them but nothing else, odd as she goes to classic car shows with her other half every now and then, I guess just to humor him. She's fine with me owning an old car and motorbikes but her own daughter?! HECK NO, bare in mind, Chloe had been out for trips in my cars loads of times.
We endured some pretty lengthy lectures over dinner and on the phone or whenever she came round bringing them both to tears at many stages and inviting her to leave our house on occasion.
This was all before the car was even in our full possession, on the day of purchase we agreed with the seller to deliver the car a couple of weeks later as we'd have had time to prepare for its arrival. Arrival day came, we took the car in and it was in the garden, where we did't want it to be. Were we going to ask her mum to use her garage? No way.
We bought a car cover and there it sat for a bit till the weather got better.
One day we decided the weather was good enough to take the car out for a spin, it was supposed to just be a trip to the local petrol station and back. We warmed the car up, it ran fine and headed on our way.
Got to the petrol station, put a tenner in, started on our way back and then it started coughing, this came to a loss of power unless you were on full throttle. This then went to would only run with choke. We stopped as soon as we could to take a look.
Nothing obvious straight away. turned it on but it felt like it had 5bhp from then on. A decision had to be made here. Drive to her mum's house, which was equidistant from our house and use the breakdown as a "we might need to use your garage" or go home and continue to store the car outside, Chloe can be quite sneaky. We drove to her mum's house.
Since the car's been in her garage I think shes come round to the fact that we're keeping it, after seeing it in person she could see it's not as bad as she might have thought, though the breakdown didn't exactly fill her with hope and doesn't change the safety aspect.
<<STORY OVER - BACK TO THE CAR>>
It should be a 1200 single carb 4 speed but has had a triumph acclaim (honda anyway) 1335 twin carb engine with the 5 speed. Has a spotless black vinyl interior and is REALLY lovely. I am VERY jealous of Chloe even though I have a 280z.
Keen eyes will notice some similarities between that car and our own...
So it's now orange with a black stripe. Overall the paint job is definitely not concourse. It's reasonably thin in places, mostly flat and there are runs. We don't care as there just isn't any rust really and there are no oil leaks, the engine bay is generally tidy for a car of this age. We have the clocks from the acclaim that the engine came from proving age and also received the 1200 single carb engine for free as a spare should the need arise.
I don't have pictures of the engine bay on me but I do have some somewhere at home.
I decided a while back to start to hunt down what the problem was and if we could get parts to fix it.
Essentially I believe the problem to be lack of fuel flow rather than bad fuel.
I checked all the standard settings for the carbs and whilst doing so noticed a few bits of rubber that weren't to my liking.
Fuel hoses and such were past needing to be replaced.
We got silicone hose in black to replace all the vacuum lines, I joined some acclaim pages and spoke to them about parts for the carbs, many suggesting Goldwing gl1100 carb parts were similar, I bit the bullet, bought some and yup, spot on, after digging deep through the carbs, I found one of the filters above the float needle and passage way was completely clogged with detritus, I cleared this out and hopefully was the issue.
That leads us to this week, I left the measuring and purchasing of O-rings to Chloe, she got some from amazon, though when they arrived they were pretty bad quality and probably not at all fuel safe and were nowhere near the described sizes, lesson learnt for her I think.
I searched and found this site : simplybearings.co.uk/shop/Seals-Nitrile-Rubber/c19_5574/index.html?gclid=Cj0KCQjw-o_bBRCOARIsAM5NbIMFVBN9R1LiO-SoNviB3SMyugEnn-wJlYyRzoBW0rTM9zXyuVLNHmkaAmFTEALw_wcB
Searched for what we needed and they arrived this week.
That clears up all the remaining seals we need to change to get the car back on the road. I've got some more pictures somewhere of the cleaning of the carbs but not on this computer. so I'll stick them up when I can, I'll be heading to see the car tomorrow all being well to get them back on and balanced etc.
